Where is the Time Going?

Another week in the books at my favorite place, Kennard-Dale High School. This week was a short week at Kennard-Dale, but as always it was a great week with our students.

This week offered a slower week, with less activities after school each day. This week was great for me, because I actually felt very prepared for, I think the first time all semester. I went into the week with a lot of my classes already prepared and that really took a lot of stress off me this week.

One of my favorite activities this week was creating a lab activity for my students in Animal Care and Management. My students get tired of taking notes and I get that. I have been struggling with creating fun and different instructional activities, except on Monday I came in with a new idea and it worked well. I wanted my students to learn about the various aspects of pork production as we were concluding our swine unit. So, I decided instead of me standing up and teaching my students through a power point, I would provide them with information, and they would have to read through and find the important information that was essential for their learning.

I created 6 stations around the classroom. Some stations had an article that students had to read through, and one station even offered a chrome book and instructions to a national pork organization that students had to check out. I provided my students with a note sheet that they had to complete by the end of class as they made their way through each station.

Overall, I enjoyed this activity as I believe my students enjoyed the act of just being out of their seat and moving around the classroom. Creating different instructional activities is something I put a lot of thought into and something I hope to continue through my teaching career.

Each day at Kennard-Dale is a day of growth and a new beginning however, this week brought one aspect of teaching to an end. This week was the end of our third marking period at Kennard-Dale. Our students got out of school early on Thursday, and Ms. Smith and I stayed at school to complete our end of the marking period duties. We finished putting grades in our online data base as well as provided comments to our students for their progress thus far. This was a great process to help with, as it allowed me to be accountable of the evaluation and assessments that I am taking of our students as well as identify areas in which I hope to help some students improve on.

Next week will offer another short week at KD, however I know it will be a great week with great success. As the weeks progress and my time as KD gets shorter and shorter I find that I am growing more attached to my family at KD. I dread the day of when I eventually have to leave our students and Ms. Smith.

But I try not to think about that too much yet!

Ms. Timmons